What makes a museum relevant? What role should a museum play in its community? Which communities should a museum serve? How and why? How do you define culture? Is it important? Those are some of the questions being discussed by ASM staff these days.

Why do you visit museums? What do you expect to see or experience when you are at a museum? Is a museum visit meaningful to you? In what ways? Often museums inspire appreciation of beauty, or enrich one’s understanding of the past or of science. Sometimes museum exhibits or programs make us think about where we live today, helping us understand different perspectives on that reality, and hopefully cause us to ask questions and think deeply. That is what the traveling exhibition The Border Project wants to achieve. It opens at ASM on September 12^th (through November 6^th).

This provocative mixed-media installation is the result of high school students exploring their thoughts about borders. These students live along the culturally and politically controversial present-day borders of Arizona/US, Mexico, and the Tohono O’odham Nation. Under the direction of artist Morgana Wallace they examined issues related to these borders and created artwork and writings. They discussed their identity and how they perceive others and how others perceive them, and what borders mean and how they affect their lives and those of others. They had frank, open discussions of these penetrating issues. Their words, related ceramic art pieces, and powerful photographic portraits make up the exhibit. There is also a place for visitors to leave their own thoughts.

The project’s website states, “The final piece [the exhibit] fostered new ways of thinking in the students while it provided the community with the youth’s perspectives on a pressing issue which is very close to home.” Invite a friend, family member or colleague and come join the discussion at the Arizona State Museum. Leave a note in the exhibit and/or express it on our blog. We will also hold a free Culture Craft Saturday intergenerational family program focused on border culture on Saturday afternoon, October 17^th. Morgana Wallace and perhaps some of the students will be at the museum. At the program, you can listen to border music and try a hands-on activity related to border culture. For teachers, there will be a special workshop that morning.

More information about The Border Project is available on ASM’s website. A video interview with Morgana Wallace and slideshow illustrating the process creating the work is available on The Border Project website.